WALTER SMITH hasn’t walked away. He has paved the way for a better future.

Now, I don’t know my CVA from my Honda CRV. Finance has never been my forte, as my bank manager would testify.

But I like to think I know people I’ve dealt with regularly over the last 20-odd years.

Smith is one of those. I’m neither his best pal nor his worst enemy but we’ve got on reasonably well over the period, to use a phrase he has been known to utter.

I’ve seen his love of Rangers and his inability to say no to that club when it has needed him has dragged him back time and again.

But on Monday he quit as chairman and cut his ties with Ibrox and, yes, he is utterly hacked off with the boardroom back-stabbings and blood-letting.

But that’s not why he resigned. Just as Charles Green returns to impose his own style of “consultancy”? And with the Yorkshireman clearly intent on picking a fight with Ally McCoist?

Sorry but I’m just not buying it. I don’t believe Smith has simply left Rangers to get on with tearing itself apart. Nor do I think he would allow McCoist, a man he groomed for the job of Rangers manager, to become isolated and ultimately helpless.

It’s not in Smith’s make-up to do that – to quit because the going got tough. This guy gave up the Scotland job to ride to Rangers’ rescue when Paul Le Guen was making a mess of things in January 2007. Within 18 months they were playing in the UEFA Cup Final.

After the trauma of liquidation he came back as a non-executive director and then chairman to try to give some semblance of stability and credibility to the club. And he was instrumental in the removal of Green as chief executive after the Yorkshireman had embarrassed the club once too often.

Yet the board – guys such as Ian Hart and James Easdale who claim to be Rangers men – still voted to allow Green back into the club and, make no mistake, he would love to be chairman. Smith was powerless to prevent it.

Walter had come back to Ibrox because he felt he had no option. The club was a shambles and working on the inside was better than trying to influence it from outside. If anything, the bitterness and bedlam is greater than ever and yet we are to believe he has thrown in the towel?

Not a chance. It’s just not his style and the statement he released could hardly have been more damaging to Green and his cohorts.

Smith has made it clear he does not believe their presence is good for Gers. He had to leave the club in order to be able to make such a statement and I’d be astonished if fans now do nothing in terms of protest.

This is their time. They’ve done their bit by buying season tickets and pouring around £5m into the share issue. Yet they’ve still been shafted. But if they heed Smith’s cry to get behind the Jim McColl-backed resolution to have Paul Murray and Frank Blin installed as board members, they can make the difference.

They can make it clear season tickets won’t be bought next summer if the Green brigade is in the Blue Room. Right now, they can organise boycotts of club sponsors’ products, refuse to buy strips and the like.

This will go against the grain but there are enough fans out there to make the institutional investors sit up and take notice.

Smith’s departure was a call to arms. He says it breaks his heart to walk away but nowhere does he say he will never be back.

He walked to mobilise opposition against Green and his backers. I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have done that while chairman of a PLC. I am also convinced if and when the vultures have been scared off the premises, Smith will return in some capacity.

But this time it will not be to fight fires. It will be to help the club rise from the ashes of another disastrous stewardship. When his work is done he will go once more. And this time not with a heavy heart.